7 takeaways from Sen. Warren's Salem town hall

Friday

Apr 14, 2017 at 1:33 PMApr 14, 2017 at 1:41 PM

Bryan McGonigle bmcgonigle@wickedlocal.com @GtownRecord

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren visited a packed auditorium at Salem High School Thursday night for a town hall meeting and delivered a 45-minute roaring rallying call for resistance against President Donald Trump.

The first-term senator and progressive politics icon spoke for a bit and then took questions from the audience.

Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll spoke before Warren came out, praising the senator and fellow Democrat for coming to the city and talking with voters.

"I call it group therapy sometimes," Driscoll joked about town halls. "But most importantly, it gives us an opportunity to see her, to hear from her, to hold her accountable and to make sure she knows that we’re supporting her in the efforts to protect and work with working families."

Here are seven takeaways.

1. Elizabeth Warren really, really dislikes Donald Trump.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Warren made a sport of attacking then-candidate Trump, peppering him with mockery and disdain at every turn.

On Thursday, she persisted.

First, she addressed his penchant for making constant headlines and accused him of creating new headlines – via Twitter, for example – to distract attention from larger issues.

"You’ve all seen the movie ‘Up,’ right? Donald Trump’s the guy who yells, ‘Squirrel!’" she said, referring to the 2009 animated Disney-Pixar film. "Whatever it is, whenever you start to push him on something, he yells, ‘Squirrel!’ We can’t shoot at everything that moves. We’ve got to be in these fights, but we have to be disciplined about these fights."

At one point, she even called for an independent investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia and hinted at possible impeachment.

So it’s fair to say Elizabeth Warren has not boarded the Trump Train.

2. Elizabeth Warren really hates Trump’s health care plan.

Warren spoke a lot about health care reform, berating Trump and congressional Republicans for their attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

A new health care reform bill, nicknamed "Trumpcare," failed to get enough votes to pass in the House last month. Warren thanked progressives at the town hall for their part in protesting the proposed bill.

"Less than two weeks ago, you beat back the biggest assault on health care in our history!" Warren said, met with applause. "The reason it didn’t happen is because of you and people like you all over this country who made their voices heard, who said, ‘Health care is a basic human right and I will get out there and fight for it.'"

Warren did acknowledge that the bill was also killed by conservative Republicans who didn’t think Trump’s health care plan was conservative enough – or as she put it, "not brutal enough. Oh, Lord."

3. Elizabeth Warren supports single-payer health care

Speaking of health coverage, Bob Daniels of Lawrence wanted to know what Warren thought about the idea of a single-payer system – one in which everyone’s coverage is government-funded – and Warren is on board.

Warren said the ACA, nicknamed "Obamacare," had mistakes that needed to be fixed in order to cut costs and increase coverage and that the country may be ready to talk about a single-payer system.

4. Elizabeth Warren wants cheaper hearing aids.

Only about one in seven people with hearing loss in America – and there are millions – get hearing aids because the devices are not sold over the counter and not covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

Hearing aids cost almost $3,000 each, and most patients who have them need two, resulting in most people with hearing impairment going without them.

"Just think about what that means – that people with hearing loss who don’t have $6,000 sitting around, it means they’re isolated," Warren said. "It means they don’t get to watch television, it means they don’t get to listen to the radio, it means they don’t go out to the store, they don’t get to talk to people and they don’t get to talk to their own families."

So in an effort to make hearing aids cheaper, Warren is working on bipartisan legislation with U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to allow certain kinds of hearing aids to be sold over the counter, allowing them to be manufactured by a larger variety of companies.

5. Elizabeth Warren wants more education funding.

Warren called for a decrease in student loan rates and increase in public funding for college education.

"I knew what I wanted to be from the time I was 7 years old – I wanted to be a public school teacher," Warren said. "But I grew up in a family that didn’t have much, and by the time I was in high school, we didn’t have enough money for college applications, much less the money for me to go to college … But what saved me, what gave me that chance, is that I went to a community college that cost $50 a semester."

"And I’m standing here before you, the daughter of a janitor and a minimum-wage worker from Sears, who made it all the way to the United States Senate," she continued. "A truly great country invests in its children."

6. Elizabeth Warren likes science.

Nick Lewis of Salem asked about how Warren thinks the nation should move forward in protecting the environment despite massive cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

While Warren had no concrete solution, she made one thing clear.

"I’m going to say something really controversial, and I’m glad most of you are sitting down – I believe in science," Warren said. "Because I believe in science, I also see what is happening to this Earth. And that takes us straight to a moral question, and I believe we have a moral responsibility to pass along an Earth that our children and our grandchildren can breathe the air and drink the water."

To make that happen, Warren suggested increasing investments in science and technology.

7. Elizabeth Warren is not impressed by the MOAB.

The day of the town hall, the Pentagon dropped a 21,600-pound Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, the largest non-nuclear bomb there is, nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs," in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, President Trump ordered 59 smaller bombs dropped on Syria.

And Warren wants some answers.

"This is about the Constitution," she said. "It is only Congress that has the right to declare war. And that means that if the president wants to drop more bombs – for example, in Syria – he needs to come back to the United States Congress. He needs to ask for authorization for the use of military force. And if he’s going to have any shot at getting it, he better explain what his plan is."

The War Powers Act of 1973, however, gives the president the authority to launch military action but requires that president to get congressional authorization within 60 days or withdraw that military involvement.

And the fact that America is still technically at war in Afghanistan and was already involved in the fight against ISIS in both Afghanistan and Syria further complicates the matter.